‘Lost!’ replied Nicholas gaily. ‘You will not be rid of me so
easily, I promise you. I shall rise to the surface many thousand
times yet, and the harder the thrust that pushes me down, the
more quickly I shall rebound, Smike. But come; my errand here is
to take you home.’

‘Home!’ faltered Smike, drawing timidly back.
‘Ay,’ rejoined Nicholas, taking his arm. ‘Why not?’
‘I had such hopes once,’ said Smike; ‘day and night, day and
night, for many years. I longed for home till I was weary, and
pined away with grief, but now--’

‘I could not part from you to go to any home on earth,’ replied
Smike, pressing his hand; ‘except one, except one. I shall never be
an old man; and if your hand placed me in the grave, and I could
think, before I died, that you would come and look upon it
sometimes with one of your kind smiles, and in the summer
weather, when everything was alive--not dead like me--I could go
to that home almost without a tear.’

‘Why do you talk thus, poor boy, if your life is a happy one with
me?’ said Nicholas.

‘Because I should change; not those about me. And if they
forgot me, I should never know it,’ replied Smike. ‘In the
churchyard we are all alike, but here there are none like me. I am
a poor creature, but I know that.’

‘You are a foolish, silly creature,’ said Nicholas cheerfully. ‘If
that is what you mean, I grant you that. Why, here’s a dismal face
for ladies’ company!--my pretty sister too, whom you have so